Iraq MP threatens to tell all on graft

BAGHDAD, Sep 22, 2011 (AFP) - A senior Iraqi MP threatened on Thursday to make public names and parties behind cases of graft if authorities did not take swift action in what experts say is one of the world's most corrupt countries.

Baha al-Araji's comments come two weeks after the chief of the country's corruption watchdog resigned, publicly protesting political interference in his inquiries. Iraq has since February seen frequent protests decrying, among other things, public corruption.
"There is huge corruption in these files," Araji, the head of the Iraqi parliament's anti-graft committee and the leader of the parliamentary bloc loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, said in a statement.
"If no legal measures are taken, we would be forced, in the committee, to reveal all the involved names, as well as the money and the factions behind them."

Parliament's anti-corruption committee cannot carry out prosecutions, which must be initiated by the Commission on Integrity. The former head of that body stepped down earlier this month, describing graft as "part of the struggle for power" in Iraq.
Araji said the 10 corruption files he was referring to included a deal to purchase hand-held explosives detectors, which have widely been panned as ineffective for even their core purposes, after they failed to prevent several massive bombings in Baghdad in recent years.

They were reputedly sold for between $16,500 and $60,000 per unit, and have become ubiquitous in Iraq, having been bought in large numbers by local security forces.
He also referenced efforts financed by the foreign ministry to renovate six Baghdad hotels in advance of an Arab League summit that had been due to be held in the Iraqi capital earlier this year but was later postponed.
Araji did not, however, provide details as to what kind of corruption took place, or to what scale, in either case.
Watchdog Transparency International ranks Iraq among the world's four most corrupt countries.